Nancy Bonnin (née Crowe) worked at University of Queensland Library first in the 1940s and then from 1960-1982. While Fryer Librarian from 1965 to 1976, she oversaw the acquisition of the Father Leo Hayes Collection. She recorded oral histories with former University staff and students between 1979-1983 in preparation for the 1985 publication A place of light and learning: the University of Queensland’s first seventy-five years by Malcolm Thomis. In the same year her book, Katie Hume on the Darling Downs: a colonial marriage was published, drawing on Fryer Library’s 19th century collection of photographs and personal correspondence of Katie Hume and her husband Walter Cunningham Hume (1840–1921) surveyor and Chief Commissioner of Lands for Queensland.

John David Hennessey was born on 16 December 1847 in London. He came to Australia in his youth, educated for the Ministry, preached in the Congregational Church in Wharf Street, Brisbane and Pitt Street, Sydney. He was a journalist, novelist, and short story writer. He died on 31 July 1935 in Dromana, Victoria.